


The Lucas Experiment

by jujubiest



Series: The Lucas Compendium [4]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His motivation wasn't nearly as sinister as Henry Morgan liked to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucas Experiment

He was a twisted man, by many definitions evil. He understood that well enough. But in his long life he had come to believe that good and evil were largely relative terms; it really depended on what else you had to compare it to. And Adam, much to his own acknowledged detriment, had seen the worst of what humanity had to offer several times over. Certainly much worse than anything he had done, and with far more hateful intent.

Adam wasn't a sadist, or a psychopath. He didn't enjoy hurting others or ending their lives, he didn't take macabre trophies or count his kills as accomplishments. He killed when he needed to, whether it was to preserve his own secret or to answer an important question. He made it quick and clean whenever possible, and was simply indifferent to the loss of something that he'd spent the better part of two millenia trying to rid himself of by any means possible.

That was the trouble with immortality of this sort: it made one equally as indifferent to life and death, their own or someone else's. When the question of life and death was no longer _literally_ a question of life and death, the whole topic became painfully academic. And life itself became an unbearable burden when there was no one to share it with and no end in sight to the loneliness.

Of course, to someone such as Henry, still so young and twice-blessed with kindness and love in the forms of his wife and son, Adam knew he must seem like the devil himself.

Henry was so blinded by the perceived horror of the things Adam had done that it was inconceivable to him, utterly foreign, that Adam might do a thing  _without_ a wicked motive, without death and horror in his mind. It was a ridiculously simple way to look at the world and human nature, of course, but then what else could Adam expect from children? And it did work to his advantage; it was so much easier to keep Henry in line when he thought that at any moment Adam might snap and enact some horrible vengeance on him, some devious plan in which the sweet, unassuming Lucas Wahl was the linchpin.

The truth was that Adam had no intention of harming Lucas, nor letting harm come to him from any other quarter.

That was the beautiful simplicity of all the dark "plans" of Henry's imagination: they lived only there, and would fester and grow with time with little or no encouragement from Adam. He needed only to maintain his presence in Lucas's life to keep Henry grinding his gears in frustration. He could smile suggestively and quirk an eyebrow across a room and send the man into a full-blown panic.

Perhaps enjoying that as much as he did was part of what made him such a monster in the good doctor's eyes.

But it was Henry's own fault for failing to see, and at least part of this torment was punishment for that shortcoming. Lucas was...special. As much an infant in literal terms as the rest of humanity, but a constant surprise in ways Adam could say of no one else. Lucas sat on the outer edges of the lives of his friends and coworkers, looking in. He made jokes that only he laughed at and drew incredulous looks of exasperation that he bore in blithe--though, Adam now knew, pretended--incomprehension. He watched more than he participated and listened more than he talked. He allowed himself to seem ridiculous to make other people comfortable, when the full sharp scrutiny of his direct, unfiltered observation would no doubt have made any ordinary person very uncomfortable indeed.

Lucas saw things few could see, judged little, and told no one. He was, in a word, perfect. And grossly under-appreciated by everyone in his life, Henry Morgan above all.

And aside from making Henry pay for his own obtuseness, Adam's motives were what Henry could never believe of him: the oldest and purest in humankind's lexicon. He saw, he wanted, he needed to know more. As much as he believed in such a thing anymore, he loved. And whatever else he was capable of, Adam could not destroy something, or someone, he loved.

He had introduced himself to all of Henry's friends months ago, each time under a different guise, with the intention of getting every scrap of information he could on the man himself. And he had found himself drawn in by this gangling young man against all probability. Before he had ever revealed himself to Henry, he'd already crossed Lucas off the list of possible tools that he could use. He was far too precious for that.

Now that Lucas knew his secret, he was even more important, somehow. It was a new sensation, to live in the world with someone who knew and wanted nothing from him for it. Someone who kept his secret willingly, gladly even, who drew joy from the simple fact of being trusted enough to share it.

Adam would do nothing to endanger that. And if he had anything to say about it, that was the last of his secrets Lucas would learn. Whatever his brave words to Henry, he wasn't sure even someone as kind as Lucas could look past the amount of blood on his hands, however ambiguously he himself felt about it. He both wanted to know and didn't, and felt the two so equally that he couldn't quite make himself look Lucas in the eye and make a conscious choice to find out.

But, he resolved to himself, he would not lie. If he ever asked him outright, Adam would tell him the truth and let Lucas Wahl be his judge and jury.

He only hoped that if that day should come, he would prove to have been right after all.


End file.
